Mystery as Tunbridge Wells bread fairy leaves loaves with cars
That is the actual title of the article. I did not make that up.
Of course, it isn’t a very good story, but it’s the best I could come up with, having spent the day sacked out on the beach eating convenience store sammiches, skimming stones and squishing sand through my toes. It was probably 80° here today, which is pretty good going for us and may well be the last gasp of Summer.
We’re spending every minute we can out rolling about in it before Crap Descends.
So, would you eat a loaf of bread left mysteriously on your windshield, or would you assume a madman had laced it with LSD?
September 4, 2013 — 10:44 pm
Comments: 22
Beanz
I fell asleep and snored through my usual post composing time tonight, so you get beans. Or, beanz. Specifically, here’s a Mail article about Heinz Beans advertisements through the ages.
It’s hard to overstate what an enormous brand Heinz is over here. I tried to scratch up a country-by-country sales comparison, but the best I could find were these bullet points:
●Heinz employs approximately 2,500 people across the UK and Ireland
●The Kitt Green factory, in Wigan, produces more than 1 billion cans per year of beans, soups and pasta meals and is Heinz’s largest food factory around the world
●The UK is the biggest bean eating nation in the World
●More than 1.5 million cans of Heinz Beanz are sold each day
●Recently recognised as one of the UK’s most loved food and drink brands following consumer research by FreshMinds
Those English people up there? Yes, they are doing what you think they’re doing: they’re making baked bean sammiches. Because, fuck knows. Baked beans are principally a breakfast food here (aiiiiii!), but they’re good for a snack any time because…no, they’re not. They’re runny orange sweet beans, Jesus what is the matter with these people?
I mean, being a Southerner, I grew up on beans. Nice, salty beans, slow cooked with a bit of pork and served with a garnish of raw onion and slice of cornbread.
Honestly, I do not know what these things are supposed to be. Get them away from me.
September 3, 2013 — 10:45 pm
Comments: 50
Forty whacks…well, nearly twenty, anyway
Hey, I bought a Lizzie Borden hatchet! We went to a big nursery today, set in an old Victorian walled garden with beautiful ornate greenhouses. It was part of a gorgeous old estate, now a school. That would have been an awesome thing to post about but, ummm…I forgot to take pictures, so here’s the thing I bought from the antique tool shed.
I used to be a Lizzie Borden aficionado. I’m not usually a fan of (technically) unsolved cases, but you have to love a prim Sunday-school-teaching spinster who wakes up one fine August morning and takes a hatchet to the old folks.
I do think she did it, though she was acquitted. Everyone in Fall River thought she did it, too, which made her later life a misery. Though her father left her rich, she was nicked for shoplifting not long after the murders. And may or may not have had a fling with a famous actress of the day. What’s not to love?
Well, in the end, lots. I lost interest after many years readying when it dawned on me that most of the mystery surrounding the case was due to the extreme incompetence of the police. Even by the standards of the day, they sucked. They didn’t search the house or anybody in it for days, didn’t verify the whereabouts of the principals. The whole business would be a lot more fun if it weren’t full of stupid, unnecessary holes.
Still, the sheer lousiness of the investigation has made the Borden murders a healthy cottage industry for upwards of a hundred and twenty years. I was amazed when I did an images search just now, how much stuff has come to light just since I last looked into it just a few years ago…including an autopsy photo of Andrew Borden. You can search for yourself, if you’ve a mind-ta.
As for the hatchet, it was never proved to be the murder weapon. It was found in the basement, snapped off just below the blade, covered in ashes. Still, I’ve always had a hankering for one like it. And not to bury in any particular skull, neither.
September 2, 2013 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 17
You see, it’s like this…
I suppose there’s no point having a friend in Old Blighty (that would be me) if you can’t get insight into current events out of it. Ummmm…so. A lot of American commentators are saying that Brits soured on the Iraq war after it went off badly.
Not so. They hated the Iraq war from the get-go and never wanted any part of it. Why should they? That it went badly was widely seen as inevitable, as the Brits (under both Labour and Tories) have cut their defense budget to the bone. They feel like they threw their boys into a meat grinder for no good reason.
Blair telling them they had to go to war or Saddam would use weapons of destruction right here in Britain was the kind of stupid scary story you tell kids to make them turn out the light and go to bed. That just added insult to death toll.
Oh, and speaking of insult, Barky started piling it on from “hello.” Forget the little things — the stupid bust of Churchill controversy, Her Maj’s iPod stuffed full of the Speeches of Chairman Obama — what really stings is the lack of support in the Falklands. Oh, and Kerry calling France America’s oldest ally tonight, that didn’t help.
So, without even going into Cameron’s failings, Syria was always going to be a hard sell.
I laugh whenever politicians talk about damaging the Special Relationship, though. They think it has something to do with them, and treaty obligations and shit like that. The Special Relationship is that we’re fundamentally the same people. Until almost the 19th C, we were fellow citizens. Well, subjects. We still watch each other’s TV and read each other’s novels in high school and follow each other’s newspapers.
This really happens: strangers hear my accent and come tell me about the vacation they took in Vegas or Disney Land or their kid who’s studying in Massachusetts. Politicians don’t own the relationship, and I get the feeling that pisses them off.
Right, then. Good weekend, all.
August 30, 2013 — 10:57 pm
Comments: 29
Whatever
Didja see this? It’s the newest photo of the Loch Ness Monster. Hit the link if you care.
I never thought it was all that outlandish that there might be something big and uncatalogued in a remote Scottish lake. I never thought it was all that interesting, either.
I mean, unless it really is something awesome like a leftover plesiosaur.
But look here at the famous photo of Nessie, in its not so famous uncropped state. That doesn’t look much like a honking big dinosaur, does it?
That photo is known as the surgeon’s photo, because the doctor who took it refused to be identified by name for years.
On a more interesting note, a Google Images search on “surgeon’s photo” turned up a link to the Burns Archive of Historic Photos. From which is derived this CBS News slideshow of cancer images from the 19th C.
Warning: gross. Fascinating, but gross. Medical books always make me feel intensely grateful to my boring functional old bod.
August 29, 2013 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 15
And finally…
The circus. Our semi-official end of Summer.
We’ve been going to this one since before we lived down here, so it’s about as old a tradition as we have together.
This year’s show was excellent. I mean, for a little podunk small town circus. As usual, everybody did multiple acts, and when the jugglers weren’t juggling, they were selling balloons and popcorn.
Every year we hold our breath, waiting to see if the circus comes. The owner (and ringmaster) wants to keep going; the rest of the family is tired and wants to quit. That’ll be a sad year, my friends…
August 28, 2013 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 13
Escaped!
We’ve promised ourselves we’ll get out and Do Stuff as much as possible while the nice weather lasts, so today we took a field trip to Pevensey Castle. Haven’t been there in years.
This is an old one. It started its life as a Roman fort some time before AD 300, and it looks as though something big and pissed off has been teething on it ever since.
To the East is the Church of St Nicholas, where this man lies in effigy. They had held their flower festival over the long weekend, so the was church full of flower arrangements. Also, someone had laid close-cropped living turf down either side of the central aisle, so grass was growing in the church, for all the world like the opening chapter of Phantastes (a story that freaked infant me out a little). Spooky.
We walked West past the castle to the Church of St Mary, Westham, which calls itself the first church built by the Normans after the Conquest. Unfortunately, it was locked — which is quite unusual. I hope it doesn’t mean they’ve had vandalism trouble.
And we also visited the old courthouse and jail (now museum), which was being minded by a daft old Yorkshire woman, for some reason. There I bought a half crown from my birth year. And I gave the old lady two bantam eggs I discovered in my pocket (Violet laid them under the lavender), for her tea.
And then we went to Mickey D’s and had a Big Mac. The End.
August 27, 2013 — 9:41 pm
Comments: 30
The last of the village fêtes
It’s a long weekend here in the UK (euphoniously described as the August Bank Holiday), the last long weekend — believe it or not — until Christmas. Really, we need to jigger our vacation days around a little.
We went to two of the last village fêtes today. Probably the very last; must have Uncle B consult his calendar.
I bought a picture frame, a cut glass wineglass to drink my mead from and a little embroidered Chinese bag to put my pencils in. Uncle B bought a cherry pitter (don’t ask).
Also, I haggled with a bookseller. He wanted to sell me four hardback books for 40p, but I persuaded him to take a pound. Because that’s just the way it is here.
Yes, there was maggot racing. No, I didn’t bet on the maggots, though I believe Uncle B has played the slimy ponies in years past (and won).
On the way through Rye, we noticed the circus tent pitched in a field. The circus. That really is the very end of the season, right there.
Where did the Summer go?
August 26, 2013 — 9:22 pm
Comments: 38
I can too accessorize…!
Here’s something I discovered through my friends at the Steadfast Trust: this knife. It’s called a seax. It was common throughout Northwestern Europe. In Britain, a seax was carried by men and women alike, and was widely recognized as emblematic of their status as freeborn Englishfolk. (Not every Englishman was freeborn. At the time of the Domesday Book (1086), 10% of England’s population was slaves. There’s something I didn’t know until recently).
The seax is a single-edged blade with a thick, sometimes bent, spine, a narrow tang (the metal bit that extends into the handle) and a natural wood, bone or leather handle. The blade ranged from a few inches, used for eating and kitchen tasks, to a proper short sword almost two feet long. The seax was usually worn in a scabbard hanging from the belt, sharp side up, in front of the body.
Also, covered in runes. Check out the Seax of Beagnoth, fished out of the Thames in 1857 and now in the British Museum. “Beagnoth” was inscribed on it (probably either the smith or the owner) along with the only known complete inscription of the twenty-eight letter Anglo-Saxon runic alphabet. Because writing is magic.
Seax is the origin of the word Saxon. Also Middlesex, Wessex, Essex and Sussex. From the online OED:
Saxon (n.) c.1200, from Late Latin Saxonem (nominative Saxo; also source of French Saxon, Spanish Sajon, Italian Sassone), usually found in plural Saxones, from a Germanic source (cf. Old English Seaxe, Old High German Sahsun, German Sachse “Saxon”), with a possible literal sense of “swordsmen” (cf. Old English seax, Old Frisian, Old Norse sax “knife, short sword, dagger,” Old High German Saxnot, name of a war-god), from Proto-Germanic *sahsam “knife,” from PIE *sek- “to cut” (see section (n.)).
Also from the same entry:
Accordingly they all met at the time and place appointed, and began to treat of peace; and when a fit opportunity offered for executing his villany, Hengist cried out, “Nemet oure Saxas,” and the same instant seized Vortigern, and held him by his cloak. The Saxons, upon the signal given, drew their daggers, and falling upon the princes, who little suspected any such design, assassinated them to the number of four hundred and sixty barons and consuls ….
Um. We’re sorry? Say, that woke up some old braincells. I bet they don’t teach Hengist and Horsa in Middle School history any more.
Google Images is chock full of seax porn. There are tons of independent makers. Ooo, this is a nice one.
This is a lovely example, too. When Chrome translated that page from Polish to English, it informed me that “the vagina is no longer an accurate reconstruction.” So, ummm…I guess we know something about the Polish word for “sheath” now.
Anyway, I have to have one. No, a seax, you fool!
Remember: here. Tomorrow. Six sharp. Dead Pool Round 53!
August 22, 2013 — 10:51 pm
Comments: 23
No, YOU wear it to town
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “you couldn’t wear that here.” I know that’s what you’re thinking, because we’re all thinking it, because you couldn’t safely wear this anywhere, not even here in the heart of all things historically Anglo Saxon. Especially not here.
I bought this at Sissinghurst on Sunday, at a booth for an organization called the Steadfast Trust, a group with the perfectly uncontroversial aim of preserving English history and passing it on to English children.
Ha ha! Just kidding! It’s incredibly controversial!
Last year when we walked up to this booth, someone was chewing out the nice blonde lady behind the counter. Because I think how it works is, one minute you teach childrens how to thatch a roof and the next thing you know, coloreds have separate drinking fountains. Word.
I’m surprised the show organizers have allowed these people in for a second year (whether they were here before that, I don’t recall). The Smallholder’s Fair is very aspirational, not to say a bit twee, and this sort of thing…isn’t a good fit.
Oh, here’s the thing…the folks we chatted with at the booth were very nice, very earnest people. But the Left has made the very idea of an identity group based on Englishness (for which read: whiteness) so off limits that most decent people are afraid to come within miles. So, over time, organizations like this one will genuinely skew to the weird.
It’s a damn shame, but you know what? I don’t have the courage to push back, beyond buying a lapel pin I don’t have the balls to wear.
August 21, 2013 — 9:49 pm
Comments: 32